Page:The healing art in its historic and prophetic aspects - the Harveian oration delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, Oct. 19, 1885 (IA b21908199).pdf/17

 things; how further, impeded at its origin, it becamo for centuries the prey of rival systems, which, based on a priori speculations, and founded on ignorance, were made to fit in with notions engendered by imperfect knowledge. The mere mention of some of these systems is sufficient to suggest the absurdities they propoundod, and to justify the taunts and sneers of those who, even could they accept the doctrines set forth, were shaken in their faith when they witnessed rival sects strenuously contending each for its own infallibility. Even Galen strongly condemned the distinctions made by these sects as leading to intermin- able hypotheses and disputes; in which each individual supported his own theory to the disparagement of others, and to the great injury of medicine in general.

How, then, can we blame the critics, who were bewild- ered by the rival factions of dogmatists, empirics, method- ists, pneumatists, eclectics, together with the many others in whose hands medicine was reduced to a mere depart- ment of speculative philosophy, involved in futile disputa- tions and in forinulas based on no substantial facts,' and who for six centuries practically monopolised the healing art? Through the dark ages, during which medicine was largely under Arabic influence, our science consisted for the most part of wordy commentaries on the writings of the ancients; and the practice, mainly confined to the priest- hood, was regulated by the grossest superstition. Those were the days of the astrologer and miracle-worker, of cures by prayers, relics, and royal touch, and of the search for the elixir vitae; the time when surgery was in the hands of the barbers. of science and learn-

But it must not be forgotten that during this very Revival period, when all science was at a standstill, and when we can scarcely point to a single observation or discovery, ing. the universities were founded, and in the hands of a few, in small and scattered schools, the light of investigation,